The former maker of the Wii, Nintendo, said it swung to a profit in the first quarter, beating analyst estimates thanks to strong demand for the Switch.

High hopes for the console has driven up Nintendo's stock price around 60 percent since its March debut. The firm has said it expects Switch to help more than double its annual operating profit and end an eight year sales decline that dogged its previous offering Wii U.

The company swung to an operating profit of $144.95 million for the three months through June, from a year ago loss.

Nintendo sold 1.97 million Switch consoles in the three months through June, bringing the cumulative total to 4.7 million units. Demand has been so strong that Nintendo has found it difficult to keep up as queues get longer outside stores. Devices have even been allocated by lottery in some cases.

The company has apologised for the shortage of Switch in Japan and pledged to raise production.

Nintendo is trying to make more use of its roster of popular characters, moving into new areas for the company including smartphone gaming and theme parks.

Nintendo has just posted its latest financial earnings report and the former playing card maker posted an operating loss of $49 million for the first quarter of its 2016 financial year.

The slump in reported income is mainly due to the terrible sales of its Wii U console as well as continued disappointing sales for its games titles. Wii U sales declined by half compared to the same time last year. Nintendo only managed to flog 220,000 units this quarter.

Meanwhile the handheld 3DS sold less than a million. Nintendo also sold about 37 million Amiibo figures and 30 million Amiibo cards. Of course most of its problems are someone else's fault apparently this time it was currency fluctuations for all of these disappointing results.

Some of the dafter investors expected the figures to be better because Pokémon Go was doing so well. But earlier this week Nintendo said that the game's success would only have a marginal impact on the company bottom line. Since then, Nintendo announced that its Pokémon Go tie-in Plus accessory would also be delayed by two months which means that it probably will make nothing by the time the fad dies out.

The company’s stock tumbled nearly 20 percent on the original news and continued to decline over the following days. Today’s news did little to help with Nintendo’s shares down five percent with this latest news.

The company is looking forward to the launch of the Nintendo NX, though the console, which is expected to launch in 2017, will do little to aid the current fiscal year for the company. Nintendo still expects to post profits of around $300 million at the end of FY 2016, but that’s below market expectations of $350+ million.

Nintendo has confirmed that it is to launch its next-generation games console, codenamed 'NX,' in March 2017 but it will not be showing off any prototypes at the Electronics Entertainment Expo.

There have been rumours of Nintendo's upcoming NX console bubbling under for ages. After all the Wii U is so dire that it has to be replaced fairly smartish. One rumour even suggested the current-generation consoles will be axed at the end of the year. Nintendo has always denied this.

Nintendo has yet to confirm specifications for the NX, but it has gone public with a launch date. During the company's latest financial report, the company confirmed that it is 'current developing a gaming platform codenamed 'NX' with a brand-new concept,' and that the NX 'will be launched in March 2017 globally.' At the same time, the company also confirmed that the latest entry in the Zelda franchise, originally scheduled to launch last year, would hit the NX as well as the current Wii U.

But the games maker has has no plans to show off the NX platform at the E3 show as many had expected.

Nintendo has leaked the timeline of its 2016 launch of its next-generation games console and asked its supply chain partners to start pilot production in October.

The console will be manufactured by Foxconn with Pegatron trying to snatch some of the orders.

Component suppliers such as Macronix, PixArt Imaging, Coxon, Nishoku, Delta Electronics, Lingsen and Jentech, are also expected to land orders from Nintendo for the new console.

We already knew in March of Nintendo's plan to release Nintendo NX in 2016 and has started visiting its supply chain partners.

According to Digitimes, which has the inside trouser measurement of Nintendo, orders will be finalized in February or March 2016 and mass production will start in May or June 2016, while the console's official launch may take place around July.

Nintendo wants to ship 20 million Nintendo NX in the first year. This is ten times more than the shipment volume of ii U.

The dark satanic rumour mill has manufactured a hell on earth yarn that Nintendo's new console will not only be the first to use a name unconnected to toilets, but will be powered by Android.

For a while now, people had been wondering what the next Wii would be called, with smart money being on the Number 2. However it seems that the new console dubbed the Nintendo NX has a few suprises under the bonnet.

According to Nikkei Nintendo is planning an Android console so that game developers would be able to port their games over with relative ease.

This could also indicate that games developed for the Nintendo NX could extend to other Android-powered devices like smartphones and tablets, play nice with the console.

Games developers have been ignoring the Wii U in droves so this might actually help Nintendo get back into the race.

Android-powered consoles have appeared before but they died horribly in the market place.

It has been a long road for the Wii Vitality Sensor that Nintendo announced way back in 2009 at E3. The Vitality Sensor came on the heels of the Wii Fit craze, and the strange concept of monitoring pulse of humans and integrating it into a video game just never worked as expected, despite significant development and cost.

According to reports, the Vitality Sensor only worked reliably on 9 out of 10 people in testing, which of course isn’t the kind of track record you want when taking a product to market. Despite canceling it for the time being, Nintendo still claims that there is value in the product; but as a commercial product it isn’t ready for prime time just yet.

While we expect Nintendo to give up on the Vitality Sensor as first announced, we suspect that the company will continue to investigate the possible applications for the technology and what it could be used for going forward. We also suspect that Nintendo has patented the heck out of the technology and its use with video games, so that is going to limit what could be done, since Nintendo is holding the rights.

Analysts that we have spoken with over the past few days believe that at E3 Microsoft and Sony will both confirm that price cuts on both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 are coming in time for the holiday season. It stands to reason that they will slash the price on the current generation of consoles for this holiday season to move inventory and pave the way forward for its new next generation consoles. The price cut could be as much as $50; but the information may only be confirmed behind closed doors to retail partners so that they can order and plan for this holiday season.

The big question mark when talking price cuts is the Wii U. If a system could ever use a price cut to get inventory moving it is the Wii U. Nintendo is still talking tough at this point, saying that it has no plans to slash the price of the system, but the numbers don’t lie; it is expected that Nintendo will have no choice but to cut the price of the Wii U by $50.

Still, even if Nintendo does reduce the price of the Wii U by $50, it is still a hard sell these days with the lack of software for the unit. While the company has a number of titles coming, these titles could not get here fast enough; it is not a slam dunk, as these titles may only provide a slight spark to sales of the unit while many weigh their options of purchasing the Xbox One or PlayStation 4 instead this holiday season.

Sources that we have spoken with from several studios have indicated that their publishing partners are pulling back a bit for the time being on the development of additional Wii U titles. The reason is simply the lack of sales on the Wii U console.

Despite coming out of the blocks fast, sales have not been that strong; and both the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 had sales numbers in January that topped the Wii U. This, of course, has not gone unnoticed by publishers and developers alike.

As one source told us, “While planning for the platforms that our next titles would be released on, it was obvious that our titles for this year and at least the first half of next year would be primarily focused on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, with several titles for the next-generation systems. Talk of Wii U ports for any these projects was met with a negative reaction, saying there just was not enough sales to warrant the development cost associated with it.”

Another source said to us, “We are only planning the couple of Wii U releases that we are already committed to doing and we might do one or two ports, but right now there just does not seem to be a demand. Our thinking is that the safe bet is to focus on the 2013 releases for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, and a couple of those will be converted to the new next-gen systems. In 2014, however, we expect our titles that come out after mid-year to be focused on the next-gen consoles, with only a few those being released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3, as well, unless sales of the next-gen consoles don’t go well. The Wii U would have to make very significant gains to figure into our 2014 and 2015 planning at this point.”

Nintendo needs something to happen to help get the Wii U flying off the shelf again; but many are now waiting to see what the Next-Generation Microsoft and Sony systems are going to offer and at what price before trying to choose which one to buy or if they will ride it out. If cost is the main factor, we could see a lot of gamers waiting, as long as they continue to get ample software flowing to their current systems, which is no real help to sales of the Wii U.

The Wii Mini is about as stripped down as it is possible to get the Wii. While no one is denying the affordability of the $99 price tag, some are questioning the lack of online capabilities as well as the dumping of GameCube compatibility as two things that should not have been stripped out of the final Wii Mini.

Nintendo suggests that the Wii Mini is for someone who is not looking for an online experience, and perhaps is a late adopter and does not have any interest in GameCube titles. While Nintendo sees it as a system that has the ability to play over 1,400 titles that don’t require online play, you have to understand their thinking when many used Wii games are so low priced.

What the Wii Mini also does is test a new configuration of the Wii that Nintendo can evaluate before bringing it to other regions. According to Nintendo, the Wii Mini achieved the majority of its cost savings by stripping out the online functionality. Do buyers considering a Wii Mini really care that it does not have online functionality? One example Nintendo gives is Canadians who want a second Wii for the cottage and they don’t have Internet at the cottage, anyway, so it is a perfect fit. It could also be a good fit for other countries in the future that also don’t necessarily have Internet. It is an experiment that we, along with Nintendo, will be watching.

The process of getting your data over to the Wii U from your Wii is a bit complex. The process does require your old Wii console, and you have to download the Wii to Wii U transfer application. You will also need an SD card with at least 512MB free, but we recommend more.

The process requires that you insert the card into the Wii U first and select the system transfer option, and then the card is moved to the Wii where you have to then download the transfer application from the Wii Shop. The Application moves the data to the SD card; and then once completed, you place the card into the Wii U and the data is moved to the new Wii U console.

For it to work, both the Wii and Wii U need to be connected to the Internet, and that is so you can download the application the verification can take place. The data that can be moved includes WiiWare, Virtual Console titles, save data for games, DLC content, Wii Points, and, of course, your Miis.

Once the transfer is completed, all of the data is wiped on the Wii console and the SD card is erased, so you have to hope you get it right. Seems like a lot of hassle, but if you are going to move to the new console, this is the only way that you are going to get there if you want to take your data with you.